It's worse than that. The single-choice menu, as well as the buffet menu, are generally naught but adverts of the most egregiously lying kind, as the political policies advertised are written to appeal to the hungry voters but generally turn out to be far from the various gruels and over-boiled slop actually served up. Anyone daft enough to believe that any political party will do what it says it will during the voter-persuasion phase of an election needs to compare historical lists of "what we promise to do" versus "what we actually did".cycle tramp wrote: 17 Jun 2026, 10:23pm .at the monoment, the idea that we vote for one poltical party is rather like chosing a set three course menu in the knowledge that you're going to have to eat all of it... even the bits you don't like.
The idea that you vote for policies rather than parties, is more like a buffett. You can pick and choose which ones you want to support and which ones you don't.
My (our?) generation were raised in the post-WWII settlement to have high hopes and high regard for the sort of policies and attitudes redolent of the Attlee government. However, these hopes, dreams and even the actualities have soon been undermined, suborned and dismantled by the usual suspects (power-mad and venal humans adept at self-centred little skinbagism). Attlee gave us a fine base to improve upon. What did we do instead to bring us to Blightedland of today, with its hordes of swivel-eyed Xitters determined to debase everything worth having in a civilisation? The generation of wonder-beings seems to have turned out to be a generation of balrogs.cycle tramp wrote: The thing about anarchisim is that its accepted it won't happen over night, or perhaps in our lifetime.. principly because it means raising a generation who are capable of thinking beyond their own needs and a accepting a level of responsibilty beyond supporting family and friends.. equally however is the present risk that if we stop attempting to raise this generation of wonder-beings, society itself is weakened..
If you think that buying things is some sort of Adam Smithy rational choice, using impersonal money tokens, you may have missed the vast edifice of advertising and influencers that's hypnotised all of us into becoming avid little producer-consumers eager, nay anxious, to have the latest thing so we'll be admired by other avid producer-consumers (we hope).
Even those without the money tokens will go into serious debt in an attempt to keep up with the Joneses. At the very bottom of the socio-economic heap, there's still a lust to spent one's few shekels on vapes and gambling, 'cos the advert personalities smile winningly and tell us we can be "cool" and "winners".
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Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was even more optimistic than you concerning human abilities and our inner angels. Utopia beckoned, in the form of Attlee's ghost! Alas, those inner angels are soon overwhelmed by our inner devils, which seem currently to have waxed and waxed. Attlee is dead and gorn.
Still, perhaps you may kindle a hope that a Large Tech Bro will become our saviour. I believe that Muskrat thinks of hisself as an anarchist of sorts. He certainly seems adept at inducing one sort of anarchism about the planet, as do several others of his ilk. To hide this, they often call themselves "conservatives"- a vast dark joke, as they go about smashing and ruining everything.